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I was just thinking idly about stuff and I got some interesting ideas. Nothing spectacular or hugely original, mind you, but interesting.

I was cosnidering my shiplist (I really should get back to work on that ) and my policy of counting deleted scenes and shooting scripts as being canon. I was thinking about whether there were cases in which this would become awkward or contradictory. Particularly, I was running over the dropped dialogue between Kirk and Sulu in the travel pod sequence from TWOK, where it's mentioned that Sulu is going to be promoted to Captain and assume command of the Excelsior. As I'm sure most of us know, Sulu's mention of his upcoming promotion was in fact filmed, but cut because (of all things) William Shatner complained about having more than one captain among the main cast. (He obviously forgot about Spock... ) You can see in the final film exactly where the pertinent dialogue was cut. As I said, it's during the travel pod sequence when Kirk and the gang are being brought over to the Enterprise in drydock. Right after Sulu says "I'm delighted. Any chance to go aboard the Enterprise---" and then is abruptly cut off, even though you can see his mouth still moving. The original scene, before being edited, played out like this:

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                                           KIRK
                             I really must thank you.

                                           SULU
                                     (embarrassed)
                             I am delighted; any chance to go
                             aboard Enterprise, however briefly,
                             is always an excuse for nostalgia.

                                           KIRK
                             I cut your new orders personally. By
                             the end of the month, you'll have your
                             first command: USS EXCELSIOR.

                                           SULU
                             Thank you, sir. I've looked
                             forward to this for a long time.

                                           KIRK
                             You've earned it. But I'm still
                             grateful to have you at the helm
                             for three weeks. I don't believe
                             these kids can steer. 

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That's from the shooting script.

Now obviously, Sulu was still a commander up until at least the time of STV, as he wore the Cmdr rank pin and was repeatedly referred to as "Commander Sulu." But there's still no real contradiction with the deleted scene from TWOK, if you take into account the fact that immediately following TWOK (which occurs a month before Sulu was to be promoted) the Enterprise returns to Earth and a few days later is stolen from Spacedock by, among others, Sulu. (Who also assaulted a Starfleet security guard and aided in the jailbreak of a Federation prisoner in the process, not the best citations the Starfleet Promotion & Command Review Board like to see on your record.) She is pusued breifly by the newly-completed U.S.S. Excelsior, which had been placed under the "command" of one Captain Styles during her construction and test-run phase. The Enterprise is soon after destroyed by her hijackers, who proceed to Vulcan aboard a captured Klingon vessel and spend the next three months there in self-imposed exile before deciding to return home to face court martial. (This already puts us at least two months after Sulu was to be promoted.) It just so happens that they end up making a side trip to the late 20th century and ultimately saving Earth from the devastation of a gigantic alien probe. Only after all of this does the crew actually face trial. Fortuantely, any charges against Sulu are dropped. But the poor Excelsior is still non-operational, so Sulu's promotion and command must be postponed. Due to the delay, Sulu is reassigned to the U.S.S. Enterprise-A along with his shipmates. The Excelsior is still languishing in Spacedock some time later, when the whole Nimbus III crisis occurs, and so Sulu is still serving as helmsman aboard the Enterprise (albeit enjoying some well-deserved planetside R & R) when the ship is scrambled unexpectedly to deal with the situation.

Ultimately, it's not until 2290 (three years before TUC) that Commander Sulu finally becomes Captain Sulu and accepts command of the Excelsior. (Starfleet finally having given up on trying to make the transwarp drive work after Scotty trashed it way back in STIII, and having refitted the ship as a conventional warp vessel and assigning her to some nice gaseous anomaly surveying in the Beta Quadrant, where poor Sulu can finally enjoy some peace and quiet and some quality tea-totalling time. )

Of course then those damned Klingons had to go and overmine their moon and...well, that's another story...

The other thing I was thinking about was the oft-debated issue of whether the Enterprise-A was in fact the renamed U.S.S. Yorktown NCC-1717 that was disabled by the Probe in TVH. I've always said that she was, since I generally consider the Encyclopedia and Tech Manuals to be canon sources. It's been pointed out to me by Spikey and others, however, that she is referred to as a "new" ship in TFF. Which, admittedly, is quite true.

So I was thinking about this and then I remembered something that I'd forgotten for quite some time, and which apparently everyone else has too. The Encyclopedia presents two scenarios---two sets of circumstances under which the postulated re-naming of the ship might have taken place. Okuda says: "...Roddenberry reportedly suggested that the second Starship Enterprise, NCC-1701-A, launched at the end of Star Trek IV, had previously been named the Yorktown, since it seems unlikely that Starfleet could have built an all-new ship so quickly. If this was the case, the Yorktown [NCC-1717] may have made it safely back to Earth and been repaired and renamed, or perhaps there was a newer, replacement Yorktown alredy under construction at the time of the probe crisis."

It's that second part that I had forgotten about. The book never specifies which of these scenarios is what "really" happened, and neither does the TNG Tech Manual, which simply says that the NCC-1701-A had previously been named Yorktown. Yet everyone seems to have latched on to the first story and left the alternative by the wayside. But what if the second option was the correct one. Then all conflicts are resolved. The Enterprise can be a new ship in TFF and still have been named Yorktown, just as the official sources say. Starfleet had a new ship on hand that had either just been completed or maybe even hadn't been totally finished yet (witness the glitches seen in TFF) that was to be named Yorktown, but was instead renamed Enterprise to honor Kirk & co.

How about it?

-MMoM

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The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.

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(or Desilu/Paramount was famous for its recycling of extras, including "dead" ones!)

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Originally posted by Peregrinus:
Well, Mim, two things about the Yorktown.

I have a problem with the whole 'newbuild' theory. By the time of Star Trek IV, the Excelsior class was coming into its ascendancy. And while Enterprise-class vessels built within the last ten years might continue to serve for close to a century as their Miranda-class contemporaries did and do, refitted Constitutions would be retired, as the Enterprise was scheduled to be. To my thinking, any venerable Constitutions would see their names applied to new Excelsiors rather than to an end-of-the-production-line Enterprise. We know there was a new Yorktown, as Tuvok said his parents were serving aboard her around the time of the Khitomer Conference.

And second, if the old Yorktown DID make it back, as is posited, and that ship became the new Enterprise, what did Starfleet do with the Yorktown's crew? If Sulu's comment at the end of TVH is any indication, new postings were presumed to be to Excelsiors, rather than the now second-string Enterprises.

Forgive my rather jumbled technique tonight, but my brain is being foggy for some reason.

--Jonah

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I've only got a few minutes to type at the moment, I post more later, but:

I don't buy it at all that Excelsiors were replacing Constitution-class ( ) ships at the time of TVH. For God's sake, the prototype hadn't even been made to work yet! I seriously doubt that Starfleet placed any real faith in the Excelsior program after its lack of performance in STIII, and it's my view that NO new Excelsiors were built until the design was refitted as a conventional warp vessel and the prototype was awarded active status, circa 2290. (A full 7 years after TVH.)

So, where do you think that the E-A came from, if you don't think it's a newbuild and you don't think it was a pre-existing vessel that was renamed? Did SF just wave a magic wand and there it was?

-MMoM

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The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.

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why does the Enterprise-A have to be the ex-Yorktown?

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